Kitsap officials, workers anxious over prospect of prolonged shutdown

The Capitol is seen at dawn on the 21st day of a partial government shutdown as an impasse continues between President Donald Trump and Democrats on funding his promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, in Washington on Friday. Kitsap leaders said the effects of the shutdown will be felt more acutely each day the government fails to reopen.(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

BREMERTON — There's nothing partial about the government shutdown for Aaron Lambert.

The Bremerton resident, who works as an inspector for the Seattle office of the Environmental Protection Agency, can count himself among the 380,000 federal government employees placed on unpaid leave due to the impasse between President Trump and Congress. Another 420,000 deemed "essential" are working without pay.

Lambert's family has some savings to get through part of January. But if it continues?

On Saturday, the shutdown became the longest in U.S. history, as the intractable disagreement over whether to spend more than $5 billion on a wall along the United States-Mexico border causes the U.S. to blow through the remaining reserves of an ever-growing number of federal departments. Many workers, like Lambert, will struggle as their own bills come due.

President Donald Trump speaks while having lunch with services members in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, July 18, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)

"It feels like we're being held hostage," Lambert said.

"There are enormous implications," added U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, who has voted on several bills to reopen various aspects of the federal government over the past two weeks. "And the implications get bigger the longer this goes on."

There are roughly 18,000 civilian federal workers that call Kitsap County home, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department. Many of those are employed by the Department of Defense, whose $675 billion budget was approved by Congress and signed by President Trump in September. Yet there are many more — agents for the Transportation Security Administration at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, employees for the Internal Revenue Service in Seattle, EPA workers like Lambert — that aren't covered.

There's also no help for the U.S. Coast Guard, whose more than 40,000 members, including those in Kitsap, will miss their first pay check Jan. 15 if the shutdown isn't averted soon.

"We aren't able to simply make adjustments to pay our bills," said the wife of an active duty Coast Guard member who lives in Kitsap, but asked not to be identified. "We are in a total financial panic."

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Coast Guard families are becoming increasingly anxious about their finances as the government shutdown drags on with no end in sight. Coast Guard members, who are required to work during the standoff, worry they will miss their next paycheck on Jan. 15. (Jan.11)
AP

And beyond the workforce and service members, the overall economy in Kitsap and elsewhere will suffer more as each day goes by. For example, Deborah Hughes, a jeweler at Two Sisters Fine Jewelry in Bremerton, said she's had 10 customers in the past two weeks ask to delay credit or layaway payments given the shutdown. Two of them were for engagement rings. Hughes gave them exemptions.

"We are all in this together," she said. "It hurts small businesses like us as well as the people not getting paid."

There's a chance Kitsap's ferry commutes could be impacted. Some vessels, including the Chimacum, are due for annual Coast Guard inspections to operate. There's a chance those inspections won't be completed, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

The shutdown has also raised alarm within Kitsap's tribal lands. Jeromy Sullivan, chairman of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe based in Kingston, wrote to President Trump and congressional leaders this week to address a number of concerns. The tribe will likely have to furlough workers if the shutdown continues and many tribal programs, including ones within health care and law enforcement, are in jeopardy should the shutdown continue.

"We urge you to work together to reach a solution that resolves the shutdown and addresses the financial needs of Indian country," Sullivan wrote in the letter this week.

Other programs that require federal approval at some point in the process — buying a home, for example — are no longer open for business. Kurt Wiest, director of the Bremerton Housing Authority, said his agency is days away from losing access to some funds for contracts through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

For now, funding for housing subsidies like Section 8 and food assistance programs like SNAP have funding left into February. But he said beyond that time frame, should Congress and the President not come to an agreement, "I'll start sweating bullets."

"I'm not panicking yet, but these are things that are very real," he said. "None of us ever thought it would go this far. I've never seen a shutdown as troubling as this one."